In our second penta-annual Rustapalooza, we fire three selected s#!*boxes across the ice in search of the best winter roach.

Okay, so it has been five years since our last "First Annual Special Olympics of Rust." As you can see, our devotion to regularity basically ends with your subscription renewal notice. Meanwhile, your many letters of complaint have been scrupulously filed in the bottom of a parakeet's cage.

Before subsiding deeper into this story, note that this new and hardly improved battle of the beaters has a different format, if you can call it that. Last time ("Battle of the Beaters," October 1997), three editors somehow weaseled the management out of $1000 apiece so they could buy the turdmobiles of their choice. Once restored to hydrocarbon-spewing mobility, the cars were subjected to a battery of challenges designed to test their drivability, durability, and destructibility. Basically, the car that fell apart the slowest won. That was in summer.

This time we waited until the planet zoomed another 180-degrees in its orbit. What is the best excuse to buy a $1000 heap in the first place but to subject it to the slush and road salt of winter while a more precious vehicle snuggles in the garage under a lambskin duvet?

Perhaps it doesn't snow where you live. Perhaps we don't care.

In the service of science or the appearance thereof, we decided to set one stipulation for the contestants: Each car would represent one of the three dominant drivetrain configurations; that is, one front-driver, one rear-driver, and one all-wheel-driver. As it happened, we also got a representative from each of the three main carbuilding continents—Europe, North America, and Asia.

We considered developing a similar crash-a-thon of tests as last time but with a seasonal overtone. The off-ramp hand-brake spin-'n'-sprint, the salt-truck joust, the 10-meter pothole puddle jump—all were good ideas rejected because of logistical problems or the likelihood that we would be sued.

Then we discovered the Michigan Ice Racing Association, and the answer was suddenly both obvious and a whole lot less work. Best of all, the winner wouldn't merely be the car that blew the fewest gaskets.

Victory would be based on race-finish points. That is a far more accurate performance measure and, more important, far less susceptible to hanky-panky.

Is there a better format? Probably.

Will you have to wait another five years for us to think of it? Likely.